


Calling Cards

by cottageholmes



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: the author really likes blue skies and you can tell, this is vague as shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:53:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27249868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cottageholmes/pseuds/cottageholmes
Summary: Snapshots. I'm honestly just trying to will a Q cameo on Star Trek Picard into existence by assigning meaning to things that probably mean absolutely nothing!
Relationships: Jean-Luc Picard/Q
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26
Collections: Qcard Big Bang





	Calling Cards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesadchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesadchicken/gifts).



> I haven't seen thesadchicken's art for the fic yet but you should check it out

The very first thing he became aware of was the opening notes of a song.

>   
>  Blue skies, smiling at me  
>  Nothing but blue skies do I see  
> 

Then came an impression of the surroundings, quickly followed by recognition. He had been here before — playing poker.

>   
>  Bluebirds singing a song  
>  Nothing but bluebirds all day long  
> 

Yet there was no sign of Data anywhere; Ten Forward was deserted. It was just him, the tumbler of whiskey on the table, and the endless expanse of space beyond. Then, a sudden movement, a flash of red, only just caught in the periphery of his vision.

>   
>  Never saw the sun shining so bright  
>  Never saw things going so right…  
> 

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“I never left,” an all too familiar voice answered, and continued: “Did you think I would?”

Picard whipped around at the sound of that voice. 

“My presence is not tethered to the physical form I choose to appear in — as you of all people, mon capitaine, should know by now.” Q lounged in a seat at the bar, his long robes draped artfully around him. He pointedly looked at the table with the glass of whiskey on it. Picard followed his gaze and stopped in his tracks. 

Five Queens, all of Hearts, were spread out neatly against the plain, grey surface. Picard picked up the rest of the deck and began to rifle through it, not caring much about where the cards went. Sure enough, one Red Queen after another fell to the floor. Q, Q, Q, Q, Q, Q…the letter — the name —repeated over and over again hammered itself into Picard’s brain. 

“That doesn’t make any sense — we played an entire game with those cards, I remember it,” he said. Q rolled his eyes. 

“It’s a dream, of course it doesn’t make sense.”

“How did I not notice? How could I not notice?”

“Just what I was thinking, myself. Don’t you remember, Jean Luc?”

“Remember what?”

Q lifted a gloved finger to his lips, evidently making a show of being deep in thought. 

“How does the phrase go again? About that detective in the silly hat your Commander Data was so fond of? Ah — the grit in a sensitive instrument, the crack in the lens, …”

“…the fly in the ointment.” Picard mumbled along with him, wondering how any of this was supposed to be relevant. 

“The one fatal flaw,” Q continued, now pointing directly at Picard. 

Just then he awoke with a jolt and a gasp, like coming up for air after diving. He also had a headache, which did not surprise him in the slightest. Q, real or imagined, tended to have that effect on most people. With a sigh, he got out of bed and made his way to the replicator in the kitchen, instructing it to please just give him something with painkillers in it. 

He had lifted the glass halfway to his mouth when he stopped in his tracks, suddenly hit by the realization that the painkillers would do absolutely no good for his synthetic body, and that a headache was probably a sign of some much more serious problem with the machinery than it would have been before. Immediately alert, Picard rushed to his office, giving instructions to his comm. console as the door closed behind him. The glass sat on the counter, abandoned.  
—

The defect had returned. That, of course, should not have been possible — considering that he no longer had a biological brain, and that nobody had been able to find any kind of malfunction anywhere in his new body. And yet, there it was. Right where his parietal lobe would have been — or rather, affecting his neurological patterns in the same way that the defect in his parietal lobe had done. Picard sat at his desk, drumming his fingers and wondering why all these strange and outlandish things always seemed to happen to him specifically.  
—

Yet — day after ordinary day went by, and nothing happened. Picard eventually decided to quit worrying for the time being. There simply wasn’t anything else to do at that moment, certainly not until more concrete evidence presented itself. What was this glitch going to do — kill him? Well, then everything would proceed mostly as it would have had his consciousness not been transferred to this new body. 

He had just been granted a little more time; and, at his age, wasn’t that something to be thankful for? Nevertheless, it was still a mystery that he did want to know the answer to. After all he was, and would always remain, a scientist and an explorer.  
—

He remembered the tangled mess of events that had led to his initial diagnosis quite clearly. How could he ever forget? Anything that involved Q was inevitably memorable, and that occasion especially so. 

He still hadn’t figured out what exactly the entity had meant to convey to him back in that courtroom. _That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknowable possibilities of existence._

 _You’ll find out,_ Q had told him. Picard was beginning to wonder if he ever would — and if he would ever actually encounter Q, in or out of the courtroom, again.  
—

Ever since he had begun to live in his synthetic body, his thoughts had strayed back to his artificial heart more often than they used to. It was as good a way as any other to make some sense of his situation, to find some sort of connection between this existence and the former. 

Was it unusual and at times slightly unnerving to think too much about his synthetic body, its needs and quirks, and the mere fact of physically being in this new way? Undoubtedly — but he regretted the events leading up to the transfer no less than being stabbed through the heart by that Nausicaan all those years ago. This time he hadn’t even needed Q to make that clear to him. Picard smiled, and thought of a young man laughing at death’s door.  
—

One morning as he was walking into the living room, he was greeted by the sight of a bouquet of red roses, dotted here and there with baby’s breath, in a vase on the coffee table. It was quite beautiful, Picard thought as he picked a single rose from the arrangement, drinking in the colour, the scent, and the smoothness of the petals. 

Deanna must have replicated the bouquet for him when she had visited the day before — she had always had a talent for brightening up her surroundings. Picard was glad she and William had decided to go on a little holiday on Earth, even though he suspected they had done it mostly for his sake.  
—

Picard hummed along to the record slowly making its rounds on his 20th century revival turntable as he prepared a nice, hot cup of Earl Grey for himself. It was a comforting habit to cultivate.

>   
>  Noticing the days hurrying by  
>  When you’re in love, my how they fly…  
> 

It was one of those serene summer evenings when Earth seemed much, much larger than he knew it to be — when the setting sun cast its last red and golden rays across a horizon that went on and on forever. Picard sat on his porch and watched as the world grew dark, watched as it was illuminated again little by little by the emerging starlight, watched as the moon climbed across that vast, black sea he had spent most of his life exploring.

It was in moments like these that the staggering beauty of it all — of life, the mere fact of life — became tangible. He could not understand how anyone could look up at the night sky and not long — to be picturesque about it — to sail beyond the sunset. Picard chuckled to himself. He was certainly a very different person from the young boy who had snuck out to look at the stars and dreamed of joining Starfleet. But deep down inside — well, who really knew about the self, anyway? He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a little while. The faint music from the record player was still audible through the open door.

>   
>  Blue days, all of them gone  
>  Nothing but blue skies from now on  
> 

Had he put the record on repeat? It was possible thanks to 24th century technology; all the good looks with very little of the inconvenience. He decided he would go and check. As much as he liked Blue Skies, which never failed to evoke fond memories of Data — well, too much of a good thing was still too much after a while. Picard was just about to go inside when he remembered his teacup, empty and quite cold to the touch by then, and turned back around to fetch it from the small side table. Halfway there, he froze. Next to the cup was a deck of playing cards, which was rather odd since Picard was quite certain that they had not been there earlier.

Just then an uncharacteristically strong gust of wind whipped across the porch, toppled over the teacup, which shattered on the ground, and made the cards fly in every possible direction. And as they fluttered down again one by one Picard saw that they were — without exception — Queens of Hearts.


End file.
